Mosquito Repellent
by Hellonurse
Summary: The darkness was beginning to dissolve around him as he thought of how this moment was working. How it was happening. He was thinking of it in terms of ingredients in a mixture. Like the active ingredients of mosquito repellent. Random Gene-Centric fic.


Another whimsical Outlaw Star fic. I'll probably put up a few more of these before I go back to writing Ace Attorney fic. Word.

All characters are not mine.

* * *

Space.

Everything about it was so massive and infinite. Everything was so unpredictable. Would a star explode in a final fit of rebellion against the endless space that surrounded it? Would pirates appear from nowhere and down your ship as you tried to fight? Tried to escape? Kill you and your family mercilessly because you might have something they want?

Space was too infinite. There was too much to it. There was nothing that one person could take and combine and make space. It was all of these _things_ from_ nothing_. It was frightfully huge and empty, yet full. The emptiness was the worst part, the part that could make the blood boil from your ears. How could so much of something still be nothing?

No active ingredients. No pieces or parts. Just nothing.

Nothing about it was finite enough for him. He liked that the things he liked best in life were so constricted and limited. Not like the cold steel of a gun or the warm body of another human being. The bitter bite of alcohol coursing through him. These were all the things that made Gene Starwind, Gene Starwind. The recipe for him was a gun, a woman and some liquor. It was a simple recipe and he treasured it for this reason. He was himself and was okay with this simplicity.

Space was none of these things. These were all things that he could reach out and touch with his fingers. These things were all worth having because they were all not in space.

There was no destiny; he had decided when he was younger. Things don't happen for a reason. Things just happen. Luck. Now, that was something to believe in. Luck would always be real to him. It was luck after all that he survived another day, every day. Luck provided him with jobs, women and weapons. He stayed below the radar for the most part, taking jobs as they came. Never thinking that things would ever change.

It was monotony really. There were days when he wished it would go away. He wished that the bad guys would win. He wished the good guys would get their skulls bashed in.

As a young boy he had decided. He was just going to go to space. That was the accepted idea. It was just something that he was going to do. It was something he was going to do because it was something that his father had done. It was destiny, right? When he was young he might have thought it was his destiny to do it. Now though, his destiny (which he no longer believed in) was to leave his feet planted firmly to terra firma. He hated space. He hated what space had made him. Space made him hate himself and by hating himself he hated space.

Gene and Space remained on unfriendly terms until.

Until.

Boom.

He was hurling through the inky blackness of it. The infinite darkness that had made him sweat and panic for so long was now all around. He felt sick. Felt like he was going to throw up.

Felt panic rising inside him.

The girl next to him looked at him as he grabbed her hand.

Another finite moment among a million stars.

They were there, in that ship, holding hands. They were so small in the inky blackness of space. His hands were shaking and hers were still and calm. He felt himself becoming calm too, then. Her hand on his was helping. Gene couldn't help but wonder how of all of the things that could be happening this was a moment that he was a part of. Of all of the infinite moments that were taking place in that second. He wondered at the cogs and gears of the universe, wondering what made these things happen in the way that they did. What were the components of this moment?

What were the ingredients to the way that the universe functioned? What made everything work the way it did? Why was he on this ship right at that moment? Why was there this woman. This girl. The ether and propulsion system of the ship. The way it glided noiselessly through the empty.

His head was spinning. He occupied it thinking of the girl next to him holding his hand and what the likeliness of the two of them meeting was. He thought about recipes and what he had read on the back of bottles of different kinds of things. Mosquito repellent, shampoo, bottled water, castor shell signs in pawn shops. Anything but the crushing blackness that would make the saliva in his mouth boil in .3 seconds.

_This moment_. _This moment is all that is happening. This moment contains the active ingredients of my hand. Her hand._ _Making us one._

The darkness was beginning to dissolve around him as he thought of how this moment was working. How it was happening. He was thinking of it in terms of ingredients in a mixture.

Like the active ingredients of mosquito repellent.

Melfina squeezed his hand back.


End file.
